


Dear Anna, Dear Elsa

by Soubrettina



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Champagne, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Letters, Operas, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Travel, Waltzing, grossout humour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:21:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2222109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soubrettina/pseuds/Soubrettina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of letters sent between the sisters of Arandelle. Starts about six months after the movie. Ties in with A Wider World</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Arandelle to Čheský Krumlov, Bohemia

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: May make little sense if you haven't read A Wider World first... then again, you might work it out.

Castle of Arendelle, March 25th

Dear Anna,

Sorry I’ve missed writing to you so many times, but I haven’t been well and Kristoff told me not to (I’m sure you’re very amused at my taking instructions from Kristoff, but on the rare occasions he gives them it’s rather like how it must have been in the mountains for you sometimes: he’s so serious you know that you’d be a fool not to listen.) Don’t be worrying about it, it lasted about a week and I’m much better now, and Kristoff and Olaf are taking good care of me. I just had a few of those horrible days where I get all iced up, for no particular reason, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to make it stop.

By the second day of lying in bed covered in snow, Kai got worried and got Dr Hoffmann- he saw us when we had measles, I don’t suppose you remember- who got worried and gave me some drug or other that meant I spent the rest of the day and much of the next bobbing round my bedroom in a pink cloud; which I can’t say was unpleasant but wasn’t getting us anywhere, so when I woke up I got more German doctors, all of whom seemed far madder than I was.

The first was a Berliner, who wanted to fill glass tubes with everything- he wanted some of my water, then he drew off some of my blood; then he wanted a few of my hairs and some nail-clippings, I couldn’t help thinking of stories of sorcery, he wanted so many bits of me. He noticed the icicles over the bed, and asked for some of my ice as well (because one never knows, so he said. I certainly don’t.) Then he wanted threads from all the clothes I wore most often, from my quilt and the hangings on my bed, he even took scrapings of paint from the bedroom walls, and wanted to know if I put anything on my skin and if I ever sucked my pen. I asked what he wanted it all for, and he said he was looking for heavy metals. I bid him good luck.

The next was an Austrian, a different sort, who was radically uninterested in my hair and my blood, and only touched on my water to ask if I had ever wet myself as child and been smacked for it (not to my knowledge, but I don’t think he believed me). He looked with fascination at my icicles, asked a lot of very impertinent questions about Papa, and asked if I was giving any thought to getting married. The Saxon who came after him wanted to know when I was to marry too, and wanted to know all about my cylces. That was when I declared I was tired and wanted to see nobody but Olaf until next morning. I ended up asking him to sing to me, just so I didn’t have to listen to my own thoughts.

In the morning Kristoff had come down from the mountain, to be relentlessly sensible at me. He doesn’t know anything about heavy metals or what the other two apparently call hysteria, but he knows everything it seems worth knowning about how to bring people round when they’re ill with cold, and that seems to work as well as anything. I’m going to start working again in the morning; this evening we went riding. I am glad you got me riding after all this time, my darling; whenever I do something that you’ve taught me, it’s like something of you is there with me.

Your evening at the opera sounds very wonderful and I can tell how much you enjoyed it, although I’m not sure what the people in the box below you must have thought. The pamphlets I’ve read on the language of the fan don’t cover that. I think if I were you I’d just sip the champagne until you have a better sense of how it affects you. And you may invite Mme Lind, when you’re home, but please don’t promise her an orchestra, because we haven’t got one. I know there was a band at the coronation, that’s not quite the same as an orchestra.

Yes, you may send the paintings home ahead of you, there’s really no point in buying them if you’re going to lug them around the continent until you’ve damaged them. Please don’t buy anything over a thousand without writing home. Please don’t send home anything under a hundred. In fact, please find someone from the court-wherever you are- to see what you’re going to buy.

Also, please make sure you find a wide-brimmed sun bonnet, and that you wear it. If you don’t have one, buy one, and that’s an order. I’d tell you to get a parasol as well, but I can’t imagine it would last very long, would it?

And remember what I said about the water being boiled. It’s very important.

In any case, I hope to hear from you when you get to Prague. Have fun.

All my love,

Elsa


	2. Vienna to Arendelle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a slight crossover here, with Johann Strauss II's opera Die Fledermaus. Don't worry if you don't know it, though, Anna explains everything that's important.

Vassesschlos, Vienna

April 2nd

Dear Elsa,

I have to write this to you because I don’t want you to find out about it from anyone else, even if you have found out about it already I want you to know that I didn’t not tell you.

I think the thing was that I probably should have followed my first impulse, which was not to have anything to do with Leda Westergard. I mean, yes, I know it when I write that it sounds like a stupid idea, I expect I shouldn’t have been talking with them at all, I know we’re not supposed to be on friendly terms with the Southern Isles lot after what happened, but, well, I’m telling this all wrong, I have to start at the beginning. The night I was supposed to be moving on from Vienna the pass I was meant to be going by had had a landslide, and on the same day the Duchess was receiving Princesses Margarita and Leda, King Magnus’ oldest daughters, they were staying over on their way home from school in Switzerland, I mean there was nothing against the Duchess having us not cross over but as we did it wasn’t like she could throw any of us out rather than have us meet each other.

Anyway we did meet each other, which shouldn’t have been big trouble and it wasn’t like anyone was going to make trouble about it, I know it’s a big family and it’s not like the girls could have had anything to do with, you know, what happened. Margarita is very serious and polite and didn’t speak to me outside formalities until I spoke to her; apparently she’s the oldest of the whole younger generation (a whole ten minutes older than Leda) and very responsible- not so much for the country, they’ve got little brothers apparently, but apparently all the cousins look to her.

Leda is quite unlike her, it seems that ten minutes is everything- she wouldn’t keep her distance and when they started playing music in the evening she came to me and she was so funny and warm that forgive me, Elsa, I ended up taking the floor beside her. It’s funny how the twins are almost the same when they’re still but as soon as one speaks or moves you know which they are, and Leda somehow makes me think of her uncle in a way that Margarita- Greta- doesn’t- suddenly there’s a smile or a movement that makes me notice something about the mouth or the eyebrows that makes my stomach twist up, because I didn’t actually think I remembered what his mouth or his eyebrows looked like, all this time I’d have said I hardly remembered what he looked like except red hair and side whiskers and a nice line in uniforms, and now I suddenly found that his face was somewhere tucked away in my head after all.

Anyway I thought, forewarned is forearmed, and anyway what’s Leda going to do? She did ask me: “I assume you’re not under a lot of tedious obligations to get educated?”, and I said, “No, just to see the world and enjoy myself,” and so she said, “In that case, I must see what can be done to make that happen.”

Anyway, what she seemed to have done was be the reason I got an invitation by the next post. A Russian prince, holding a party so it said, but as I understand it now it’s more like he has an open house most of the time to all sorts of people. Maybe I should have thought something when I found out it was just me and Leda going, and she said on the way: “Of course I shouldn’t be going, that’s why we’re going out of the back door- I take it you’ve never heard of Orlovsky, then?”

So yes, that was what I did wrong, getting into a carriage to go somewhere with Leda that King Magnus wouldn’t want her to go. She said that she “had heard all about you, I knew you’re not the same sort as Greta, you’re good fun”, which is also a little bit worrying because I don’t know where she’d heard it from, though now I really am starting to wonder.

Anyway, I know what you’d said about sipping the champagne, but it’s not easy in those wide glasses to do that without spilling, it was either finish it or try to walk about it with it, which is impossible. And I think the chocolates we were given might have some kind of spirit in them too. And they kept giving us the champagne, and… well, the other thing about the Villa Orlovsky is that anyone who’s been invited- and I think you might be working out the sort of people who get invited, other than people like me who don’t know, I mean, and I don’t think I will be ever again, was that it’s perfectly okay to go in a mask.

Well, at some point I wasn’t sure where Leda was- see, there are a lot of coloured lights, and I think it may be that they flash in patterns, although that might have just been me, and I was dancing with this man who was wearing a mask and in all the noise all that I could tell was that he really did know how to dance, really he was doing it all for me and at some point we seemed to be in the middle of the floor on our own and then my feet aren’t actually on the floor and he’s spinning me faster and faster and then the music stops and he takes off the mask and no I still don’t quite understand how he came to be there, I can see how he might have skipped wherever he was being held in the Islands but all the way to Vienna has defeated me completely, but I tell you what, I think he learned something, which was if you want to scare and embarrass a girl that you were once absolutely heartless to by turning up right in front of her at a ball, then if you must get your wicked niece to feed her far too much champagne and chocolate, and then spin her round and round and round in a disorientating room before you shock her like that... then perhaps you shouldn’t wear a white uniform when you do it.

After it happened, I couldn’t do anything but just sit down on the floor, and he’s standing over me in this dreadful state and, well, I can’t describe the look on his face, but the more I think of it, I think at some point I’m going to start finding it funny.

Of course everyone at the Villa Orlovsky thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen straight away, including Leda, who ran in and dragged me out backwards straight away, and kept dragging until she’d got me out into a waiting carriage- I don’t even know if it was ours- but by the time I’d stopped shaking enough to take her handkerchief, it was moving and she was looking out of the window calling: “No, Uncle, you simply can’t get in like that, you’ll have to walk. And possibly go for a swim on the way…”

I really tried to be as quiet as I could coming in, but I couldn’t seem to find my way up the steps, and somehow I lost Leda again (yes, I see now why I really shouldn’t have been going about with Leda), and I really was starting to think I’d have to lie down there and possibly die from poisoning, but then a door opened and a person in a nightgown comes out, and speaks softly to me, and gets me on my feet, and she walks me up to bed, and after I started to calm down I realised it was Margarita.

I tried to say how sorry I was for getting her out of bed, how I knew I shouldn’t have done anything so stupid, but she shushed me and rubbed my back. She says: “I think Leda really does think that sort of thing is fun. She’s not quite as grown up as she thinks she is.” I asked if I was going to be in trouble, and she said she’d see I wasn’t: “I can’t predict what your sister will think, but I won’t tell anyone. You seem sorry enough for me.”She stayed with me the rest of the night, brought me willow-fine and water several times and a bucket twice, she washed my face and at some point I was almost asleep on her shoulder, when I asked her what she’d actually heard about me and her uncle.

She said: “Nothing that doesn’t make me wish that he wasn’t a better man, if it meant I could have called you Aunt Anna, because even from what I was told about you, I thought that would have been so lovely. But that’s just me being selfish. I don’t know what to do with Hans but to keep writing.” I said: “You write to him?” She said: “Someone has to. I can’t tell him that I know there’s good in him, because I don’t think lying helps. And I can’t just tell him he’s a bad man, because I’ve been Head Girl long enough to know it doesn’t help to keep telling people they’re bad, it makes them worse. I just keep telling him that it would be so much better for everyone and him if he were other than he is. The letters I get back are quite nice, really. He likes what I suggest he could have. He just never ends up following the suggestions.” I said: “You still love him then?” She said: “Not really. But I know what my duty is, and I will see it done.”

At some point just before sunrise, I woke up to hear her opening a window, and throwing out what looked like a sack of something soft.

When I came down to afternoon cakes with the Duchess- and everyone was most concerned about my headache, which made me feel like a terrible liar- there was some sort of gossip going on in the parlour that completely stopped as soon as I came in, and everyone looked at me guiltily, which didn’t make me feel any steadier.

I got Leda aside for a walk in the garden, and said: “Everyone knows what happened, don’t they?” She said: “Anna, if any of them know what goes on at the Villa Orlovsky they don’t talk about it. No, they couldn't mention it to you, but they’ve heard that Uncle Hans has been arrested in the main square, dressed in the livery of one of the Duchess’ servants. No idea how he managed that. Anyway, he’s been put on a train back home again. We’ll be able to see him when he gets back- oh, I am going to laugh at him.”

Anyway, I’m going to take the train over to Graz tomorrow, and go into Italy by way of Triste. And I really have learned about champagne this time.

Yours with much contrition,

Your loving sister,

Anna


	3. Arendelle to Trieste

Castle of Arendelle, April 18th

Dear Anna,

Please write and tell me that you’re okay.

Please, please, if there’s a problem, tell me. Anything. It doesn’t matter if you’ve done something silly. Trust me, I just want you to be alright. If there’s anything wrong at all, I’ll either send you any money you need to come home at once, or I’ll arrange for someone to bring you home; or if you can’t travel right now, please just tell me what you need. I’ll send Kristoff, or Kai, or I’ll come myself.

And if it’s nothing at all, but you just feel hopeless and alone and nothing works to make you happy but everything you think your mind puts a twist on it to make it a sad thought, tell me. It’s a huge thing to do, to go so far from home, and it might just be tiredness. If that’s what it is, come home as soon as you can. Don’t feel bad about anything you have to drop, you’re sick and you need to rest, and it’s really best to rest at home with the people you’re close with.

April 19th

I realise what I wrote yesterday may be a little alarming. I think one of two things has happened. Either something has happened (or, as I said before, perhaps nothing has happened but that you’re tired and alone and yes that can be plenty) to make you terribly unhappy.

Then there’s the other possibility: that Prince Hans is doing what Prince Hans does like to do.

I’m sorry to be mentioning him, my love, but he arrived with the spring weather- because King Magnus seems to be happy to leave the question open until one of us- preferably Hans, though I expect it doesn’t matter if it’s me- dies of old age, and Hans isn’t helping the issue by apparently not being fit to stand trial, except for when he is. I don’t want to talk too much about it because I don’t want to upset you.

Suffice to say that his nice-sounding niece Princess Margarita has been writing to him here- it was waiting here already- and there was a drawing enclosed with the letter- a drawing I expect you must remember, that she’d done herself. Looking at it objectively, isn’t she a good artist?

However, it’s a little hard for me to look at it objectively, Anna. I don’t think it’s a mistake of hers that has given you that expression. Sorry to say it, but you look terrible. You look like you’ve been up all night crying. For a month. You’re thinner than I last saw you, there are shadows under your eyes and hollows in your cheeks, and something about your eyes… I’ve never seen you look like that and not be shouting. I don’t want to think of you looking that sad and not shouting about it, just sitting still while Margarita draws a pretty picture of you.

Because it is pretty- you still look beautiful. You are very beautiful. Even when you look like that. I love you so much, my brave, wonderful, sweet, precious girl. I want to think that you’re having a wonderful time seeing all those beautiful places. But if you’re not, if you’re not happy, I want you to be where I can look after you. Like you look after me.

But there is the matter that it is on my desk, right now. That is- that Prince Hans sent it to me, saying it was a good picture and it would mean more to me than to him. Never mind that it’s his niece’s work, of course- the niece who he seems to be at least on passing good terms with. That I can see, of course Prince Hans doesn’t do sentimental value.

I suppose he didn’t want to look at a picture of you looking hurt and unhappy (which I guess is a good thing?) But if he just wanted to get rid of it… well, I’m sure he could have managed that. But he didn’t destroy it, he sent it to me.

Now I’m starting to think about what you told me about Margarita, and I’m wondering. I’m wondering why she drew you like that instead of trying to help you. I’ll hold onto that thought to stop you-know-what happening in here.

I’m a little hampered right now because I’ve got Olaf on my lap (he says hello and hopes you’re enjoying the sun. When he saw the picture he looked worried, but he just climbed up and put his twigs around me.) I’m sorry for the smudges, the angle meant I got ink on my gloves.  Fortunately for the sake of this letter I’ve been able to take down his snow-cloud, while he’s in here with me.

Please write back.

Elsa


End file.
